I Still Believe

“I Still Believe’s attempt to inspire comes at the expense of the woman it means to honor.”

Title: I Still Believe (2020)
Directors: Jon Erwin 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Andrew Erwin 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Screenplay by Jon Erwin 👨🏼🇺🇸, Jon Gunn 👨🏼🇺🇸, and Madeline Carroll 👩🏼🇺🇸, based on the book by Jeremy Camp 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Anni Glissman 👩🏼🇺🇸🌈

Note: This review was commissioned by Lionsgate. The content and methodology remain 100% independent and in line with Mediaversity's non-commissioned reviews.

—SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 2/5

I Still Believe, a saccharine love story based on the real-life relationship of singer-songwriter Jeremy Camp (KJ Apa) and his first wife Melissa Henning (Britt Robertson), opens with a young, college-bound Camp setting out for California on a Greyhound bus. If you’re at all familiar with the evangelical Christian movement of the aughts, I Still Believe will immediately bring you back to its very specific brand. This is a world full of Bible Studies in trendy coffee shops and church services that could easily be mistaken for concerts, shown here through the glossiest of lenses. Set against ocean waves and palm trees hazy in the setting sun, the idyllic Bible college teems with athletic, tan, mostly-blonde students, all of them clean-cut and cheerful.

From the start, everything comes easily for Camp. His first night on campus, he sweet-talks his way backstage at a concert and runs into his idol, the singer Jean-Luc Lajoie (Nathan Dean). Within minutes, Camp makes such an impression that Lajoie hands over his guitar for tuning and offers Camp the chance to watch the show from the wings of the stage. It’s from this vantage point we see Henning for the first time. She sways earnestly in place with her eyes closed, one hand in the air and the other on her heart, singing each lyric in time with the band.

Later in the film, Camp will tell Henning he fell in love with her right at that second. We’re supposed to find this romantic—proof the two are destined to be together. Instead, it feels like confirmation that Camp sees Henning as a prize to be won. From the start, she’s quick to tell him she’s not interested in dating and he’s quick to dismiss her. He pursues her with the unwavering conviction of a man who sees no as a challenge rather than an answer. Throughout the film, Henning repeatedly turns him down or ends things, and each time her suitor stubbornly persists in his attempts to wear her down.

Any likability Camp holds onto is due solely to Apa, whose charming and genuine performance often pulls the film’s over-the-top dialogue back from the brink. Still, his character’s entitlement and the film’s lack of subtlety or emotional depth make it hard to truly root for any of the characters.

Gender: 2/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

I Still Believe falls short many times over, worst of all in its treatment of the person it claims to celebrate. The film does Henning dirty in ways it’s hard to believe a man would ever be subjected to. From the beginning, she’s deprived of any agency or autonomy. The script’s clumsy foreshadowing makes it immediately evident that she won’t survive the cancer diagnosis she receives at 19, not long after she and Camp meet.

The second she agrees to marry him, Henning loses what little control of her own life she had. In one of the most painful scenes, she sits anxiously in a hospital bed waiting to hear from her doctor only to have him pull Camp out of the room when he arrives. She watches through the glass door as her husband is given her prognosis right in front of her.

Over and over again, I Still Believe makes a martyr of Henning before she’s even dead. Under artificial planetarium stars on their first date, she tells Camp, “The God of a trillion stars knows my name, and he has a destiny just for me.” Months later in the throes of sickness, she asserts that if one life was changed by her death it will all have been worth it.

Immediately following her diagnosis, Camp proposes—an inexplicable move given that they were broken up at the time. Henning asks for time to think. When she calls Camp back, she tells him God instructed her to pray for him—and his wife. Her words hang heavy in the air. It was at this moment, she says, that she knew she loved him. She accepts the proposal.

At the film’s end, Camp dedicates the titular song, “I Still Believe,” to his wife’s memory. He sings tearfully to an adoring crowd. As over-the-top as the moment feels, it’s not finished. As he walks away from the stage after the crowd is gone, Camp is stopped by a pretty redhead with an Australian accent. “I’m the one,” she tells him. “It’s my life Melissa changed.” The movie ends with real-life footage of Camp and the same woman, now his second wife, watching their kids frolic on a beach as waves crash around them.

Race: 1.5/5

Melissa’s doctor (Cameron Furst), a Black man, is the sole character of color in I Still Believe, save for a few background players without lines. At best, this can be read as an unintentional oversight. I Still Believe is, after all, a biopic centered on a relationship between two white students at a small, mostly white college. In many ways, it makes sense the film lacks diversity given its focus on religion and the level of segregation in U.S. churches in the late 1990s and early aughts. But the filmmakers don’t seem to notice this phenomenon at all, likely because they are all white themselves. The result is a world that isn’t explicitly racist but at times still feels eerily like a sundown town.

Deduction for Disability: -0.75

Henning’s character, as someone with terminal cancer, faceplants into every disability trope you can name. For starters, the crux of the film hinges on using her illness as inspiration porn. Naturally, this means Henning also has to die so that nondisabled characters, Camp and Camp’s second wife, get to live their happily ever after. It doesn’t get more by-the-book offensive than this.

One small area does, however, save I Still Believe from a full deduction point. Camp’s brother Josh (Reuben Dodd) has Down Syndrome and his character in the film, though minor, has a clear personality outside of his disability. Discussing his initial worry upon learning his younger son’s diagnosis, Camp’s father (played well by veteran Gary Sinise) says, “My life isn’t full in spite of disappointments. It’s full because of them.” In the hands of another actor, this sentiment might have skewed towards patronizing. Instead, Sinise’s understated delivery makes it one of the film’s few effective emotional moments. Another key factor that makes Josh’s character feel authentically portrayed is the casting of Dodd to play the role. Dodd has CHARGE Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that shares many symptoms and characteristics of Down Syndrome.

Mediaversity Grade: F 1.58/5

I Still Believe knows its target audience and plays right to it. Viewers who subscribe to conservative Christian beliefs will find inspiration and comfort in its strongly-rooted faith and sweeping romance. But the film suffers from its narrow worldview and adheres to its message of faith at the expense of any nuance. Without meaningful depth or complexity, the characters in I Still Believe fall flat and are denied a chance at growth.

Such a narrow worldview can also make it hard to identify the misogyny and ableism directed at Henning, which can seem benign and even well-intentioned. She is clearly loved and not subjected to any hatred or ill will. But the film never grants her the humanity that nondisabled men are almost always assured.

I Still Believe isn’t worth watching for many reasons: Its script is clunky and overwrought; despite its tragic story arc it never truly connects emotionally; and its complete lack of racial diversity feels uncomfortable at best. But it’s equally important not to mislabel the film’s message as wholesome or inspiring when it comes at the expense of the woman it means to honor.

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Grade: FLiMarch 13, 2020